Product Manager

Product Manager addresses product customization and variety definition early in the “idea” or concept phase of the development process. With Product Manager, companies can capture market and technology requirements and then decide how to best satisfy them with standard product features that are leveraged as appropriate across the product portfolio.

Description

Quantifying and minimizing the “cost of variety” is a business challenge many companies face today. In a competitive landscape driven by the rapidly evolving needs of technology-savvy consumers, companies recognize that product personalization is critical to business success. Companies are forced to concentrate on more market segments and constantly strive for short lead times in order to stay competitive. Introducing customization and personalization in existing product portfolios increases development costs and introduces risk.

Product Manager helps manufacturers of complex products to manage the conceptual and commercial aspects of their products while maximizing the reuse of existing intellectual property (IP) and assets. With Product Manager, users define and manage a master feature-option dictionary and configuration rules across the product portfolio. This approach to product planning provides valuable input to R&D and operations to deliver products to market faster while helping to minimize design changes and reducing development cost.

Product Manager, Product Architect, and Product Engineer are often used together by companies to develop and launch the right solution at the right time. They collectively increase company efficiency while reducing time to market. Product Manager is used to articulate and plan the company’s product objectives and strategy. Product Architect systematically designs the product architecture to meet the product objectives and strategy. Finally, Product Engineer executes and implements physical solutions that meet the design goals set with Product Architect.

Key features & benefits

Product managers can define a portfolio of configurable products that respond to unique customer needs

Establish a single feature dictionary that enables configuration consistency for all configured structures

Configurable product owners and stakeholders have immediate visibility to product definition and new feature development status using the Product Timeline report

A generic product architecture enables companies to rapidly introduce new variants based on the company’s business goals and target markets